links for 2008–12–31

"Aperture and Shutter Priority modes are really semi-manual (or semi-automatic) modes. They give you some control over your settings but also ensure you have a well exposed image by the camera making some of the decisions on settings. Let me explain each separately"

"As a result Iâ€™ve decided to take a run through the basic shooting modes that most digital cameras have (both point and shoot and DSLRs have most of these).
While this is pretty basic information for many readers Ⅰ hope it will be helpful for those right at the beginning of their digital photography journey who are yet to venture out of Automatic Mode."

"Digital Cameras seem to be one of the gifts of choice this year for Christmas if the questions in my inbox are anything to go by.
As so many new camera owners are starting out with photography in the new year Ⅰ thought Iâ€™d compile a list of photography tips and techniques that new camera owners might like to work through in the coming weeks.
Some are very basic while others go a little deeper – but all have been selected from our archives specifically for beginners and new camera owners. Enjoy."

"The grad student invited turkers to draw up to five sheep at the rate of 2 cents apiece. Over 40 days and 40 nights, the sheep flooded in at a rate of 11 per hour. By the end, 7,599 turkers had participated. He collected 12,000 sheep and promptly put 10,000 of them up for sale at the rate of $20 for 20 sheep at the Sheep Market. This caused some consternation among the people who had drawn them. "They're selling our sheep!!!" wailed one poster on a turker message board. Another wrote: "Does anyone remember signing over the rights to the drawings?" In fact, they had. To participate in Amazon Mechanical Turk, workers, in the legalese of the site, "agree that the work product of any Services you perform is deemed a 'work made for hire' for the benefit of the Requester, and all ownership rights, including worldwide intellectual property rights, will vest with the Requester immediately upon your performance of the Service."
Why sheep? Koblin relished all the associations that sheep have

"Last month, Rex Sorgatz asked about collecting metadata on the album for data crunching. After spelunking through Billboard's chart history, that sounded like my idea of a good time.
So Ⅰ compiled all the data into spreadsheets, used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to collect some additional information, and pulled out a few charts. As always, I've provided CSV downloads for all the data along with the original output from Mechanical Turk, for those interested in experimenting with the platform."